Introduction
Pre-orders allow customers to purchase products before they are officially released. This can help generate buzz and secure sales in advance. When enabled, it:- Displays a pre-order message on product pages.
- Changes the buy button label to indicate pre-order.
- Optionally shows an estimated shipping date (if defined in metafields).
- Marks product cards across the store with a pre-order badge or updated button text, ensuring consistency everywhere products appear.
Setup
To enable pre-orders for a product, follow these steps:1
Set metafields for pre-order
You need to create and set specific metafields for products you want to offer as pre-order. This involves creating a true/false metafield to indicate if a product is available for pre-order, and optionally a date metafield for the estimated shipping date.
- In the Shopify admin, go to Settings → Custom data → Metafield definitions → Products → Add definition.
- Create a Preorder metafield:
- Name: Preorder
- Namespace and key:
theme.preorder - Type: True or false
- Save the definition.
- (Optional) Create a Preorder shipping date metafield:
- Name: Preorder shipping date
- Namespace and key:
theme.preorder_shipping_date - Type: Date
- Save the definition.
2
Set pre-order metafield of product
After creating the metafields, you need to set them for each product you want to offer as a pre-order.
- Go to Products and open the product you want to enable pre-order for.
- In the Metafields section:
- Set Preorder to
True. - (Optional) Add a Preorder shipping date if available.
- Set Preorder to
- Save the product.
3
Set up the theme
Finally, you need to enable and configure the pre-order feature in the theme settings.
- Go to Online Store → Themes → Customize -> Theme settings → Products.
- Add the Pre-order block to the product page template and configure its settings.
- Enable the Pre-order option in product card settings to show pre-order messaging on product cards.
- Save your changes.